Open source alternatives to Facebook

[woodsmoke]

I was involved with the development of a Linux quite a while ago which was also involved with a nascent alternative to FB. It got the "basics" right but was rough around the edges and then the whole thing just kind of stopped.

There ARE working alternatives to FB which can be used and should work especially well now that stuff can be hosted on the cloud.

The real reason that the nascent FB didn't get finished, I think, was precisely why the old Zuck makes such boatloads of money from FB.

People really DO want all that cra99ola that FB is loaded with. Teens and young millenials apparently really do want to have all that instant gratification of posting about their zits and what they are doing to fix them.

When I randomly get on FB the posts read like a cartoon on steroids of the 1950's soap operas.

Yeah, there is "some" useful stuff on there like... " the genealogical society of ... a local town" or "have you seen this missing child"..and "Uncle joe is going to hospice care if any friends want to visit"...but most of it is "maudlin bleatings" about me, me, me, me... and I'm not being elite here...but I never was into it as a kid and certainly not now.

My oldest boy, a top level programmer, actually made one of these work and put it on a server in his basement for use by our "extended" family which is quite extended and "first friends" etc. but...

nobody used it because it wasn't "Facebook".. no linkys to this or that or adverts or whatever...just family and friends posting...ummm pics and news. AND NOW...STUPID BLARING VIDEO OF A KID PUKING on the breakfast table...WHAT!!

Irritating...and...BORING!! lol

Here is a site which aggregates a few of the open source alternatives.

https://alternativeto.net/software/f...nse=opensource

[Bings]

As much as I object to Facebook's dubious behaviour, my main issue with Facebook is more a problem with how it works. I don't like using feeds to communicate with my friends. I don't think it encourages proper communication, I view it as the IRL equivalent of all sitting alongside each other on a bench, all shouting at the same time and not listening to each other. It's not personal conversation. So I resolved that if people I know want to tell me stuff, they can tell me directly and visa versa. Anything else is just pretending to be interested. Feeds work great for news from news outlets, bands, business, other impersonal things you want to follow but not for personal friends. For that, I can still view public pages on facebook and with a greasemonkey script, it even removes the login prompt. It's bad for those that use public pages because they are having information they want to spread as wide as possible being restricted behind a login (unless you're consumer is savvy enough to know what a greasemonkey script is!).

Out of those alternatives, I've tried minds, diaspora and steemit. Minds I disliked, the first thing I had to do was block the top of the "feed" which despite who I added would always be dominated by people who had paid to be at the top. It was also full of these "alt right" people who say controversial stuff not for the point of having good discussion but just to provide confirmation bias already have those views.

Diaspora is nice and I love the idea of federation but again it's not a way I would want to communicate with friends even they would ever go on there, which they won't.

Steemit is based round some virtual currency (minds is going that way too) and I don't know about all of that. I'm still not sure any of these virtual currencies are anything other than a ponzi scheme that is going to sting the last people there at this point in time.

I have a twitter account at the moment and I use an android app called Twidere which seems to remove the t.co tracking links and change them to bit.ly ones. I think micro blogging is a better way to spread information. Some people did a sting on twitter engineers who were admitting they regularly go in and read private messages so definitely not a place to communicate privately over.

[jglen490]

You want to communicate with your friends? Social media gets in the way of that. Go see them face to face. If they are far away, pick up the phone and talk with your real voice. Write something on an actual piece of paper. Everything else just gets in the way of real communication .

[woodsmoke]

You want to communicate with your friends? Social media gets in the way of that. Go see them face to face. If they are far away, pick up the phone and talk with your real voice. Write something on an actual piece of paper. Everything else just gets in the way of real communication .

yeppers

[ianp5a]

Facebook fails to be able to communicate with people outside of Facebook. If they made email, you could only email people with a facebook.com email address. If they made a mobile phone, you'd only be able to communicate with other Facebook phone owners. So you can only go "where all my friends are". It's no longer a meritocracy if you have no choice. Facebook don't need to improve, or care about it's users. What are they going to do? Leave?

The decentralised networks, mentioned in the link, let you join any of hundreds of networks. They just need to use an open protocol.

[woodsmoke]

So They just need to use an open protocol.

Aaaahhhh THERE's the rub!

good post

woodsmoke

[DoYouKubuntu]

Having deleted my fb account years ago, due to their dubious, devious, covert shenanigans, I really have no desire for a facebook-like app for Linux, although I'd be open to trying one just for the hell of it. Anything open source deserves its chance.